Creator Affinity – Garth Ennis

Well known for his religious satire and violent works, Garth Ennis is a man that worked his way up for some time before becoming a strong household name. He would mostly be known for Preacher and his seven year run on Marvel’s Punisher MAX series.

Ennis began his comic writing career at the young age of 19 (so don’t procrastinate people!) with his series Troubled Souls. It gained a sequel known as For A Few Troubles More. From here he moved on to Judge Dredd, taking over from the original creator. With top selling stories such as Muzak Killer, Emerald Isle and the twenty parter Judgement Day.

From here, he want onto his first American Comic, Hellblazer. He worked on this from 1991-1994, holding the most issues ever written by one person. During his run, Steve Dillon partnered with him on the artwork, which led into a long lasting partnership as they worked on Ennis’ Preacher. Let’s not forget to mention that from 93-95 he worked with John McCrea on Demon, which lead into another successful pairing with the run of Hitman, a new character that was introduced during Demon.

Ennis actually worked on both Preacher and Hitman at the same time, although the latter was much more overlooked compared to the former (not to say it was completely overlooked). Preacher was about a priest with supernatural abilities who was literally searching for God, wondering why he abandoned his creation. Hitman was about, well… a super-powered Hitman. Ranging from comedy to violent action and adventure. These were both very successful runs with Preacher maybe being Ennis’ landmark series.

After these series he had been promised by Joe Quesada to write Punisher for as long as he wanted to. While at Marvel Ennis also wrote stories for Thor, Spider-Man, Hulk and Ghost Rider. Other notable works, but for Image and Avatar Press would be The Pro and The Chronicles of Wormwood (about the Antichrist).

In 2006, it was announced Ennis would do another creator-owned series and it was going to be published by Wildstorm, called The Boys. In a world with super-powered people, there is a secret CIA group known informally as The Boys who are to keep an eye on these suped up people, intimidation and murder allowed. However after six issues, Wildstorm cancelled despite the series having high sales. It was later picked up by Dynamite Entertainment and is now an ongoing series with rumours of it ending at 60 issues. Yet another Ennis series with a growing fan-base.

Another large success for Garth Ennis would be his ten issue series Crossed. Set in a world where there is a virus that is spread similar to a zombie virus, but with all zombie similarities ending there. The virus breaks a person’s will to hide or ignore their dark and violent thoughts and manifest them tenfold. Raping, eating and just killing people. This has gone on to become a world for other writers to explore with their own stories and characters.

Garth Ennis spent some time to truly get his foot in the door, but once it was there he flew with colours. His violent and satirical ways have become recognisable amongst many comic book readers. Truly a man of talent in the industry today.